


How Cosette Met the Man in the Yellow Coat

by everyonewasabird



Series: Gardens AU [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Everybody Lives, Fix-It, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:40:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26478115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everyonewasabird/pseuds/everyonewasabird
Summary: One day in the spring, when Cosette and her mother came for their daily visit, Marius told her that for the past several nights he had seen candles lit in the windows of the cottage in the wild garden.It was a terrible shock. It seemed to Cosette it could not be right. Sensible people did not live among nettles and briars. She knew this because her mother had been telling her for years to be sensible and come away from them."Impossible," she said.Marius only looked more pensive. He lowered his voice. "I know," he whispered. "That's why I think it's a ghost."Set in midautumnnightdream‘s Gardens AU, where Fantine stayed in Paris with Cosette, and Georges Pontmercy kept custody of Marius, and they all became friends.One possible story of how Cosette met Jean Valjean.
Relationships: Cosette Fauchelevent & Jean Valjean
Series: Gardens AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1924915
Comments: 5
Kudos: 23





	How Cosette Met the Man in the Yellow Coat

The garden next door to Monsieur Georges Pontmercy's garden had been wild for as long as Cosette could remember. For almost that long, she had thought of it as hers. No one else had ever seemed to want it.

Marius was forever looking troubled if she broke a flower in his father's tidy flowerbeds, or dug where she was not supposed to dig, or left bare footprints where she was not supposed to walk. But there was a break in the fence behind Monsieur Pontmercy's beloved rose bushes where she could climb over. Sometimes Cosette brought Éponine, but more often she went alone. Nobody ever minded what she did on the other side of the fence.

One day in the spring, when Cosette and her mother came for their daily visit, Marius told her that for the past several nights he had seen candles lit in the windows of the cottage in the wild garden.

It was a terrible shock. It seemed to Cosette it could not be right. Sensible people did not live among nettles and briars. She knew this because her mother had been telling her for years to be sensible and come away from them.

"Impossible," she said.

Marius only looked more pensive. He lowered his voice. "I know," he whispered. "That's why I think it's a ghost."

He was five years older than Cosette--that is to say, twelve--but he was always being silly like this. She could not say for certain it was not a ghost, but in her admittedly limited experience, most things turned out not to be ghosts.

Yet, if some person had taken up residence in her garden, that might be worse. It would not be hers any longer, nor would it belong anymore to the birds and rabbits and snails. Adults were forever chopping and trimming things that should not be chopped or trimmed.

So while her mother was deep in conversation with Monsieur Pontmercy, and with Monsieur Bahorel who had stopped by on his way again, though even Cosette knew Monsieur Pontmercy's little cottage was not on the way to anywhere, and while Marius was listening to the adults and Éponine and Azelma and Gavroche were distracted by the cakes Cosette's mother had baked, Cosette slipped away behind the rose bushes and over the fence.

It was wild as ever. The quiet, grassy cavern beneath the bushes and briars, her usual route, was untouched. She crawled through on her hands and knees. The ground was firm and only a little muddy today. It smelled sweet and sunny and green. Dragonflies and bees hummed among the deep green thickets.

Marius must be wrong, she decided. Adults did not live in places like this. And it was far too sunny and lively for ghosts.

She was just coming to these conclusions when she reached the end of the tunnel. She got up, brushed off the front of her skirt, and saw the man upon the bench.

He was a very old man--she knew this because his hair was white. His face was lined and darkened by the sun like Monsieur Pontmercy's, though his shoulders were much broader and his hands were enormous. He wore a long, yellow coat and a round hat, and he gazed off into the caverns of green with a sad expression. He looked the way Cosette's mother did sometimes, when she paused in her sewing to gaze out with dreamy sadness at something far away. Perhaps this was why Cosette was not afraid.

She took a step nearer, and the old man looked up. Perhaps she should have been afraid then. She was not.

"Are you a ghost?" she asked.

"Do you think I am?"

She looked him up and down, from his old-fashioned shoes to his dusty knee breeches and worn elbows and his old and shabby hat.

"No," she said. "Ghosts don't wear round hats."

"I see."

"Is this your house?"

"It is."

"Please don't cut down the garden," she said in a rush, "I like it. And the birds and rabbits like it, and the--" She was going to say the snails and woodlice also liked it, but she feared that might turn him against it, so she fell silent.

He smiled. All the wrinkles on his tanned face scrunched together, kindly and warm. Even smiling, he looked sad.

"I shan't," he said. "I like it too."

He turned away from her and with his pocket knife cut at some of the the woody vines that covered the tree beside him. When he had a length of them, he began to wind them. In a moment, a small wicker doll lay in the palm of his hand. He held it out to her.

"She should have a flower for her hair," Cosette said.

"Pick one for her."

She was encouraged by his appreciation for flower picking, which Monsieur Pontmercy forbade in his own garden. She searched among the flowers in the dappled shade and at last picked a daisy. The old man wound it solemnly around the doll's head. When he finished, the daisy crowned her like the feathers and flowers that adorned the hats of the fancy ladies in the park.

"She's a very fine lady!" Cosette said, taking her. "Do you think she looks like a Catherine?"

"I think she might."

Cosette cradled the doll on her arm, smiling down at her. She had a doll of her own at home and a tiny lead sword, both of whom she loved dearly. She thought they would both get on well with the newcomer, who carried herself with an arresting air of both wildness and high fashion.

Cosette looked up at the old man. "Come back with me."

His face changed, not dangerously, but warily. "Oh?"

"Yes," she said. "You will meet _maman_ and everyone, and we shall have tea and cake."

"I don't think that would be wise. I'm best where I am."

"Yes," Cosette said. "I like where you are, too. But you haven't any cake, and we have. So you shall come over, and meet my mother and Marius, and Monsieur Bahorel who is visiting, and Éponine and Azelma and Gavroche, and Monsieur Pontmercy, whose house it is, and Monsieur Mabeuf, who sometimes comes to visit, and--"

"I'm afraid I can't come for tea today."

"We will be back tomorrow."

"Nor tomorrow."

"Then it is settled," Cosette said. "You will come the day after tomorrow, and I shall visit you over the fence until then, so you will not forget you are welcome. I shall tell _maman_ to make sure there is extra cake for you. You must come, for Marius thinks you are a ghost, and I must prove to him you are nothing of the kind. He acts brave, but I think he is really very frightened. Please, do come."

There was a long pause. The bees and dragonflies hummed, and the dappled shadows flickered over them in the slight breeze.

At last, the old man smiled.

"Very well," he said. "I will come to tea."

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on tumblr! @everyonewasabird


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